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Erik Johnson's Prepared Statement to Judge Ronald Murch, Oak Ridge, TN August 17, 2004 |
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Today as all my days, I have a responsibility and a calling, as an ordained Presbyterian minister for 35 years, husband, father of 5 children, grandparent of 3, a carpenter, and a citizen to protect all life because sacred is all life. I have a calling to proclaim another way after the manner of the One who is Peace -- Jesus -- and to heal and to build up. On the evening before my nonviolent action at Y-12, I participated in a worship service, a service led by Catholic Bishop Tom Gumbleton of Detroit, Michigan, and centered in the opening of Scriptures calling us to trust the God of life, to have the kind of faith that is "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen," and to place our heart in service of God's reign of love because that is were our treasure will be. (Readings: Hebrews 11 and Luke 12) On Sunday afternoon, August 8, 2004, as part of a large, nonviolent community of hundreds of people and with an open heart to the demands of the gospel, I carried onto the road at the entrance to the Oak Ridge Y-12 Weapons Plant (renamed "Oak Ridge National Security Plant") two symbols with me: First, a makeshift figure of a small child, limp in my arms in remembrance of the hundreds of thousands of people who experienced the tormenting and horrifying death from the two atomic bombs which were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 59 years ago. Second, I helped carry a mock warhead of a nuclear missile (which we raised with other sessions of the bomb to a height of 20 feet) a grimly reminder that the wrath of fire delivered on August 6 and 9, 1945 by two "gods of metal" produced here at Y-12, as were the tens of thousands of nuclear warheads over the past 59 years; a reminder not only of this shadowy history but also of the ongoing, full-throttled work to upgrade all of these weapons and design new ones. There is an old saying we are tempted to embrace, "Time heals all wounds," and to move on, despite 59 years of unbroken sorrow and painful memories of death, memories that are often exacerbated by silence and forgetfulness. Nine days ago, I once again stood with others at the gate of Y-12 to declare that the memories of the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki cannot and will not be buried in ashes and blackened shadows, and death-seeded landscapes. I remember. We remember. It is in the interest of the whole world that we remember, because Y-12 is at full throttle in arming for the next 100 to 120 years the missiles for Trident submarines, the W-76 warheads. The silos across the northern plains of the United States are filled with W-87 warheads, already refurbished here at Y-12. All other warheads in the U.S. arsenal wait their turn. Under international law, World Court decision, U.S. Constitution (reference of my co-defendants' presentation of these) and my own Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) denominational stance, I have, as does everyone, a responsibility to address the criminality of Y-12: the repeated violations of numerous treaties that commit the U.S. to disarm. I also, according to the demands of the Nuremberg Principals, have a responsibility even to bring indictments for the planning, preparation of war crimes against humanity. I say "war crimes," because these weapons are no respecters of God-given life and have the capacity to destroy everything we know and love in the amount of time we are today in your court; "in a single afternoon" says Bishop Gumbleton. Everything. For me, as well as for many others, the preservation of God's gorgeous and wild Earth is an issue of faith because Y-12 represents a conflict between the sovereignty of the Creating God of life and the forces of death, opposing powers vying for our trust. On the one hand there is the spirit of justice and the way of nonviolent love; on the other, there is the spirit of injustice and the way of violence. I hold fast today and tomorrow to the "conviction of things not seen" but promised, to work to bring life where there is the atmosphere and conditions that make for death. I gave the action of August 8 over to trust in God and believe that every act of nonviolent counts. My act of nonviolent resistance to the "gods of metal" at Y-12 is another way I walk in trust with the "assurance of things hoped for." And I am encouraged by the courage of my co-defendants, our bold supporters, and the dramatic expressions of faith and trust in a loving God by " a cloud of witnesses" - Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, Clinton Marsh, Philip Berrigan, Rachel Corrie, and others. So here, today in this courtroom I willingly and joyfully trust God and denounce the "gods of metals" of Y-12 as evil and blasphemous. I sing in my heart still the hymn I sang with friends of kindred spirits (Pax Christi members et al) in worship the evening before my act of nonviolent civil resistance: "Seek ye first the realm (kingdom) of God…" |
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